


Void

by Qille



Series: Dark Magic [3]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Burns, Creepyness, Demonic Possession, Gen, Hallucinations, Horror, Infection, Mutilation, Night Terrors, Poison, Psychological Torture, Skylands, Stabbing, Swearing, Torture, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5675077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qille/pseuds/Qille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since the events of Bitten, and the Hat boys are going on with their lives. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong when Smiffy tries something new and releases a malevolent spirit from the Void. Now they're being hunted by the darkness. Nowhere is safe. </p><p>This story takes place at the exact same time as Flux and Straw, and it explains why Ridge wasn't in that story. Rated M because of the incredible amount of blood, body horror, and other questionable things that are in this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fluxed Up

**Author's Note:**

> This is my favorite (and it's way longer than Flux and Straw). Have fun.

The night was silent and peaceful, lit only by the light of the full moon. There was no wind, so the sounds of howling from the nearby forest carried for miles. This didn't bother Trottimus much. He was so used to the howls that he was able to continue sleeping comfortably in his room in one of the highest portions of the Marble Towers. 

The bedrooms on either side of him were empty – Smiffy was still downstairs working on building a new wand focus, and Ross was out in the forest somewhere, most likely murdering something. They had decided after the first few full moons to let him run; whenever they tried to keep him caged up, he would usually end up hurting himself. They figured finding him in the forest in the morning sick but uninjured was better than pulling him out of a locked room and trying to stop the bleeding.

Trott didn't think about that though. The day before he had prepared everything they would need to deal with the aftermath of the full moon. For now, he was sleeping peacefully, dreaming of fish while Smiffy paced back and forth downstairs, his nose buried in his book as he tried to work out why he couldn't make the new wand focus. 

Just after midnight, Trott was snapped awake by the sound of an explosion from downstairs. He flopped out of bed and ran over to the elevator, zapping down to Smiffy's workshop. 

He was shocked to see just how much flux had appeared. There was purple gas on the ceiling and purple goop all over the floor. There was a wand focus in the center of the altar, and it too was covered in purple goop. Not only that, but there were a few fires dotted around the room as well. 

When the shock of the destruction wore off a second later, he saw Smiffy lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from a wound on his chest where the flux lightning had struck him. Trott quickly ran over, seeing that he was unconscious. Shaking his head a bit, he grabbed Smiffy under the arms and dragged him back towards the elevator, bringing him upstairs and into his room. 

With a bit of effort, he managed to get Smiffy back into his bed. Then he ran and got his first aid kit from his room. Without bothering to take the shirt off, he put a quick and temporary bandage over the wound to keep pressure on it and keep it from bleeding. 

After making sure Smiffy wouldn't bleed out, he ran back downstairs and cleaned up as much of the flux as he could. He didn't have his jetpack, so he couldn't get to the flux on the ceiling. He would have to take care of it in the morning.

While he was cleaning up the flux, he glanced over at the wand focus on the pedestal. He recognized it as a portable hole focus, even though it was mostly covered in purple goo. He didn't dare touch it. 

A few minutes later, all of the fires were put out and the flux was mostly gone. Satisfied with his work, he went back upstairs to the bedrooms. When he went into Smiffy's room, he was surprised to see him waking up.

“Hey Smith,” he said, coming over to him. “How do you feel?”

Smiffy only replied with a low groan.

“That bad, huh?”

“What do you think, mate...?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. 

“Here, sit up for a second,” said Trott, ignoring the green man's sarcasm. “I need to put some proper bandages on you.”

“I can't fucking move.”

“Then bite this,” said Trott, handing Smiffy a washcloth. He then spent the next five minutes struggling to get some bandages on his friend. It didn't help that, as soon as he got Smiffy upright, he became incredibly pale and almost vomited. Then it took a few minutes to get his shirt off without increasing his discomfort. Getting the bandages on was the easiest part. 

As soon as Trott taped up the bandages, Smiffy fell back onto his pillow, grimacing in pain at the impact. Trott felt his forehead and found that he had a fever. 

“Well mate, looks like you have a pretty severe case of flux flu,” said Trott, taking Smiffy's pulse. His suspicions were confirmed when his friend tried to pull his hand away but was too weak. 

“Okay, well you just lay there and try not to vomit on yourself,” he said. “I'll be right back.” Then he turned and quickly left the room, heading into his medical supply closet back in his room. When he came back a few minutes later with flu medicine and an IV drip, Smiffy was already drifting off.

“The fuck is that?” mumbled Smiffy, gesturing to the bottle of medicine Trott was holding.

“This will keep your fever down and help you sleep,” said Trott as he hooked up the IV. “Flux flu moves pretty fast, so hopefully you'll sleep through the worst of it.”

“Don't worry, I'll still be sure to be a pain in the ass tomorrow.”

“I would expect nothing less,” said Trott, rolling his eyes a bit. “Alright, now hold still.”

The second the needle went into Smiffy's arm, he passed out. 

**XXX**

Smiffy sat upright with a gasp, looking around. Wherever he was, it was dark and foggy. It took him a moment to realize that he was dreaming.

He slowly stood up, looking around. This was the first time he had ever experienced a lucid dream, and he figured it was because of his fever. 

He tried to walk, but the ground felt uneven, like it was constantly moving and shifting. He stumbled, struggling to stay upright.

Looking around, he saw that the black fog was slowly getting thicker, making it harder for him to see and breathe. Suddenly, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He whipped around, but it was gone. Whatever it was, it had left behind a smell like ozone and burning flesh and the distinct, metallic smell of blood. 

Struggling for air, Smiffy frantically looked around, again and again seeing the shadow darting around the edge of his vision. He started to hyperventilate, panicking as the smell of blood grew stronger. Whatever was in there with him, it seemed to be growing more aggressive. 

The thing shot past him again, this time clipping his shoulder with enough force to stagger him. He heard a voice echoing through the mist, calling his name. 

He could hear the thing coming at him from behind, charging him. However, a split second before it struck, he woke up with a gasp. 

His vision was blurry at first, but then everything slowly came into focus. The first thing he noticed was the oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face. Had he been struggling to breathe? He couldn't remember.

Then he saw Trott standing over him.

“Smith, are you okay?” he asked, looking concerned. “You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“Did I...?” asked Smiffy, confused. “I don't remember any nightmare.”

“Maybe it was just a fever dream,” suggested Trott, looking at the monitors he had attached to his friend. “It does look like your fever got worse... I'll give you something for that before I leave.”

“Leave? Where are you going?” asked Smiffy, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I've gotta go find Ross,” he said, gesturing to the window, where the soft light of the freshly risen sun shone through. 

“Right,” said Smiffy, nodding lethargically. 

Trott narrowed his eyes a bit. It was unusual for the flux flu to last this long – normally, it would burn itself out within a few hours. This one seemed to be holding on tight. 

Shaking his head to focus, Trott picked up a syringe of fever medicine and put it in the IV drip, which he was surprised hadn't come out with all of Smiffy's thrashing.

“I should be back soon,” he said, setting a glass of water by Smiffy's bed. “Try and stay hydrated.”

Smiffy groaned a bit, and Trott turned and left.

As soon as he stepped outside into the oddly chilly morning air, he reached into the pocket of his doctor's coat and pulled out a small hand-held tracker. He began to follow it's signal without question as it led him into the forest. 

After their little incident with Ridge, Ross had never fully recovered from his lycanthropy. The silver bullet that Trott had put through his heart had stopped him from transforming every night except for the full moon. They had found that out the hard way.

However, after they decided to let Ross run free on the full moons, Trott had planted a tracking device in his arm. They all agreed this was the best way to handle the situation; although, now that Smiffy was sick, Trott hadn't been sure how he would carry both Ross and his medical supplies. Luckily, he had fixed that problem the night before.

It didn't take him long to find his friend. Within ten minutes, he was in the middle of the forest. After another two minutes, he found a small clearing, where Ross was curled up in the fetal position. 

Setting down his medical bag, he went over and gently shook his friend awake. Slowly, Ross woke up, suffering from the exhaustion of the transformations and the lack of sleep.

“You made it,” said Trott, scooting back a bit as Ross slowly sat up, trembling and covered in blood and the shredded remains of his clothes. Trott didn't give him the clothes he brought because he knew what always happened next.

As if on cue, Ross convulsed a bit and vomited up a mess of blood and bone fragments and chunks of half digested meat of indistinguishable origin. 

It took him a few minutes to get rid of everything the werewolf had eaten in the night. Once the episode was over, however, Trott moved in and carefully dragged him towards the edge of the clearing. There, he leaned him up against a tree and began to carefully clean the blood off of him while stitching up any wounds he came across.

While he worked, Ross slowly came back into consciousness. He looked around a bit, slowly regaining his senses.

“Trott...?” he choked out after a minute, his voice raw from the obscene amount of howling and snarling from the night before. “W-where's Smith...?”

“He had a little accident last night, so he couldn't come,” explained Trott as he pulled a large t-shirt out of his bag and carefully put it on his friend. 

“Is he okay?” asked Ross, the fog of exhaustion slowly disappearing from his eyes.

“He's fine,” said Trott, handing Ross a bottle of water. “He got hit with a bit of flux, and it gave him a pretty resilient strain of flux flu.”

“Oh...” muttered Ross as he sipped the water. Trott pulled out a syringe, and Ross held out his arm, looking away as he gave him a dose of powerful pain medicine to stop his bones from getting sore and locking up again. His bones and muscles always took the worst hit during a transformation, and they were the cause of his pain in the days afterwards. 

“Quick question...” said Ross quietly, feeling the exhaustion catching up to him. “How are we going to get home?”

“With this,” exclaimed Trott, pulling a thin silver cylinder out of his pocket. He stood up and stuck it against a tree, where, to Ross' surprise, it unfolded into a dimensional door.

“I put another one in the tower and linked them together,” said Trott, picking up his medical bag. He opened the door, and inside, Ross could see the interior of the tower, just outside the entrance to their rooms. Trott tossed the bag inside before turning and carefully pulling Ross to his feet. This was a bit of a struggle, because Ross wasn't even strong enough to hold his head up, much less keep his feet under him. 

After several minutes of cursing and struggling, Trott managed to drag the now unconscious Ross through the door. As soon as they were through, he closed the door and broke the link so nothing unwanted could get inside. Then he dragged Ross into his room, knowing fully well that today was going to be a long day...


	2. Relapse

Smiffy's fever broke later that afternoon, which wasn't a surprise, considering how fast flux flu moved. Shortly afterwards, he started feeling better and was able to walk around without feeling overwhelmingly dizzy or nauseous. The wound on his chest was still hurting him, however, and he suspected it was the cause of the breathing trouble he was experiencing. Of course, he didn't tell Trott or Ross about this. He would rather have Trott paying attention to Ross, seeing as he always needed help after the full moon.

With Trott distracted helping Ross, he figured he would be able to go back downstairs and continue with his research. Maybe he would even be able to find out why everything exploded the night before. However, Trott seemed to have some sort of built-in maternal instincts, because as soon as Smiffy tried to get out of bed, the walrus was suddenly there asking him what he thought he was doing and if he was out of his mind.

“If you mean _bored_ out of my mind, then yes,” grumbled Smiffy as he sat back down on his bed, biting his tongue to keep from grimacing. 

“Okay, well if you hold still and let me change your bandages, I'll give you this,” said Trott, holding up Smiffy's Thaumonomicon and a roll of bandages.

He would have sighed, but he couldn't quite take a deep enough breath. Instead, he sat back and carefully took off his shirt so Trott could get to the bloodstained bandages. However, when Trott took the bandages off, Smiffy was shocked to see black and purple streaks radiating out from the wound.

“The hell...?” he mumbled, confused and slightly alarmed.

“Those are Litchenberg figures,” said Trott. “Lightning scars. They should fade after a few days.”

“Gross... How's Ross?” he asked, shaking his head and quickly changing the subject. 

“He's fine, just exhausted,” said Trott. “You know how it is, he'll be tired and sick for the next day or so, then he'll be back on his feet.”

“Speaking of which-”

“You can go back to work tomorrow,” he said, finishing up with the bandages and handing Smiffy his book. “I'm going to go check on Ross... try to get some rest.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Smiffy, waving his hand dismissively as he laid back and started paging through his book. 

Without realizing it, he found himself staring at the portable hole recipe. What had gone wrong? He was certain he had gotten the recipe right, so why hadn't it worked? Maybe it was because the Enderman he had gotten the pearl from had been tainted. Maybe he had used the wrong type of essence. Maybe his altar wasn't stable enough.

He thought about it for so long that he started to drift off, and when he woke up an hour later, his book was laying on his face. He pulled it off and set it on his bedside table before spending the next few minutes trying to catch his breath. It was worse now; it felt like somebody had reached into his chest and was slowly crushing his lungs. 

With a groan, he sat up and pulled on the shirt he had been wearing earlier. When he did, he realized it was a bit easier for him to breathe when he was upright. 

Cautiously – and quietly so Trott didn't hear – he swung his legs over the edge of his bed and slowly stood up. He was nearly blinded by the pain in his chest, but after a minute, it seemed to go away, and he could breathe easily again. 

He started to carefully pace around his room, staying close to the bed in case he fell or was hit with another wave of pain. He did this for several minutes, occasionally going over to the window and looking out to see the sun coming closer to setting. It looked cold outside. 

Suddenly, he heard a noise in the doorway. He turned around to see Ross standing there, wrapped up in a blanket. He was pale and shaking, but he was also smiling. 

“Ross, what are you doing up?” asked Smiffy. “Also, how the hell did you manage to get past Trott?”

“A creeper blew up the door downstairs, so Trott's fixing it,” said Ross, his voice weak and hoarse. “But he told me you had an accident, so I came to see if you were okay...”

Smiffy smiled. He knew how shitty Ross always felt after a full moon, so the fact that he had even gotten out of bed just to make sure he was okay was touching. 

“Yeah, there was a bit of an explosion, but I'm fine. Just a bit banged up,” said Smiffy, leaning against the foot of his bed. He was starting to feel a bit dizzy again.

“What happened?” asked Ross, clearly fighting exhaustion and pain. There were plenty of places to sit, but for some reason he remained standing. 

“It was weird,” said Smiffy, thinking back. “I was trying to make a portable hole, and I had the right recipe, but it didn't work. I tried it about five times and nothing worked, but the last time I tried it... the second I activated the alter, everything exploded. There was flux everywhere, and I-”

He suddenly stopped, doubling over and clutching his chest. Then, before Ross could do anything, he dropped to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Smith!” exclaimed Ross, kneeling down next to his friend. He tried to talk to him, but Smiffy wasn't responsive. He only lay curled up in the fetal position, coughing and shaking and convulsing as he desperately tried to get oxygen, his face twisted into a grimace. He had become so pale that he was translucent, which only happened on very rare, very bad occasions. 

“Trott!” he screamed, panicking too much to acknowledge the pain in his raw throat. 

A few seconds later, Trott came running into the room.

“What the fuck happened?!” he exclaimed.

Ross couldn't respond. He only frantically shook his head.

“Okay, hold on,” said Trott, his voice shaking. He immediately spotted the oxygen gear from earlier, which he had left right next to Smiffy's bed. He ran and grabbed it, carrying it around to where Smiffy lay. He carefully fitted the mask over where he assumed Smiffy's mouth was – it was very hard to see when it was closed – and started the oxygen flow. 

They waited in tense silence for two minutes before Smiffy finally started to breathe again. After another minute, he opened his eyes and looked around, confused.

“Wha-... what... h-happened...?” he stammered, his breathing shallow and shaky. 

“Mate, I think your flux flu relapsed,” said Trott, feeling his forehead and finding that he had a fever. “Hold on, let's get you back in bed...”

Trott then proceeded to drag Smiffy back into his bed while at the same time keeping the oxygen gear on him. Ross wanted to help, but he was barely strong enough to pull himself back to his feet. 

As soon as Smiffy was back in his bed, Trott ran out of the room and came back a minute later with a syringe, which he stuck in Smiffy's arm. 

Smiffy made a small grunting noise, as if to ask what was in the syringe.

“That was more flu medicine, plus some stuff to help you sleep,” said Trott. “It shouldn't take long to-” He stopped when he looked up and saw that Smiffy was already unconscious.

“That was fast,” muttered Ross, who was sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Y'know, I think he's in worse shape than you are,” said Trott as he carefully gave Smiffy an IV to keep him hydrated. He also turned up the oxygen level on the machine to hopefully make it easier for him to breathe. “So what exactly happened?”

“I came in here to see if he was okay, and when he was telling me about the accident, he dropped and stopped breathing,” said Ross quietly, clearly struggling to stay conscious.

Trott nodded, looking back and forth between his friends. “Okay... just wait here for a minute.” Then he left the room.

Ross didn't even have time to wonder where he had gone, because a minute later, he returned and placed a bed on either side of the one Smiffy was occupying. 

“What's this?” asked Ross.

“This is so I can keep an eye on both of you,” said Trott as he helped Ross stand and move over to the bed to the left of Smiffy.

“Is this really necessary?” asked Ross as he sat down on his bed.

“Yes it is,” said Trott. “As of right now, I'm not your friend, I'm your mother. Now lay down and take a fucking nap.”

Ross would have argued just for the sake of arguing, but he really was exhausted, and his pain medicine was starting to wear off. Only a few minutes after he got in bed, and after a generous dose of pain medicine, he was asleep.

Trott stood there looking between his sleeping friends, wondering why he was cursed to be the responsible one. Then he spent the next few hours working on various projects that didn't require him to leave the room. By the time the moon rose, he had become so bored that he had taken apart his jet pack and put it back together six times. 

Finally, as the clock ticked closer to midnight, Trott was finally tired enough to go to sleep. After checking on his friends one more time to make sure they were both okay, he turned out the lights and flopped into bed.

He had been laying down a grand total of twelve seconds before Smiffy suddenly sat bolt upright, screaming and panicking.

Trott was so shocked he fell out of bed, but he was back on his feet in a second. He quickly went over to Smiffy, who was sitting upright, frantically looking around and breathing hard. 

“Smith, are you okay?” asked Trott, kneeling on the bed next to his shaken friend. “What happened?”

Smiffy didn't respond. He kept looking around, shaking and dazed. That was when Trott realized that he must have been having a night terror, just like the one he had earlier that morning. He also noticed his friend had accidentally ripped out his IV in his panic, and the wound was bleeding.

“Hold still for a minute,” said Trott quietly, even though he knew Smiffy couldn't hear him. Then he reached over and grabbed a roll of bandages off the bedside table and used them to wrap up Smiffy's wrist. 

His friend was still shaking, his breathing ragged and pained. Trott could see a few splotches of blood starting to seep through his shirt, so he carefully removed the shirt and cut away the bandages. In the darkness, he couldn't quite see the wound, so he couldn't tell if it was getting infected or not. He would have to check it in the morning. 

After he finished bandaging the wound, he saw that Smiffy was still shaking and looking around like he was expecting something to attack him.

“It's okay, you're safe,” whispered Trott, gently hugging Smiffy and knowing fully well that if his friend were actually conscious, he would set him on fire. 

No fires started, but Smiffy did seem to start calming down. He slowly stopped shaking, and his breathing seemed less pained. After a few more minutes, he started to relax. Thirty seconds later, he had fallen asleep, leaning against Trott. 

After making sure he was really asleep, Trott carefully laid him back down, checking to make sure his oxygen mask was still on properly. He decided against another IV, knowing that it was possible for Smiffy to have another fit of terror and knock it out.

He also noticed that Ross had slept through the entire incident. He must have really been exhausted.

After once again making sure both of his friends were okay, Trott jumped back into bed and fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted from taking care of his friends.

He was done being a mother for today.


	3. Terror

Trott woke up late the next morning, still tired from dealing with Smiffy the night before. He sat up and looked around, seeing Ross still fast asleep. However, Smiffy's bed was empty, and there was an oxygen mask lying on the pillow. 

He sprung out of bed, panic replacing the grogginess. However, a second later he noticed that Smiffy's book was missing too, and his panic was replaced with annoyance. He turned and stormed out of the room – quietly so as not to wake Ross – and headed downstairs. Sure enough, the green man was standing next to his altar.

As Trott stomped towards him, he saw that Smiffy was examining the portable hole focus he had made the night of the explosion. It was no longer covered in flux goo – upon noticing this, Trott also realized that all of the purple gas on the ceiling had vanished. For the sake of his own sanity, he assumed that Smiffy had cleaned it up. 

He also noticed that his friend was looking better than yesterday. He was clearly moving around with less pain, and because Smiffy wasn't wearing his jacket or vest, Trott could see that the bandages around his chest were hardly bloodstained. 

“Smith,” said Trott loudly as he came around the altar. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“I'm working,” said Smiffy, sounding distracted. “Yesterday you said I could go back to work...”

“That was before you stopped breathing,” exclaimed Trott. He thought about mentioning the night terror, but he saw no benefit in that. 

“Well, I'm fine now,” he said, turning to face the walrus. “Also, if you try and force me to go back to bed, I will fucking set you on fire.”

“Alright, alright,” said Trott, taking a step back. “Just promise to take it easy, okay? Maybe don't blow yourself up again?”

“Shouldn't you be taking care of Ross?”

“.... Right,” he muttered. “I'll be back to check on you later.”

“Take your time,” said Smiffy as he turned away and went back over to his workbench.

Trott felt like he should say something – even just mention the episode from last night – but he felt like if he hung around any longer, Smiffy would use his new wand focus to send him down a floor. And because he didn't have his jet pack on and didn't feel like having his knees broken, he turned and went back up the elevator to the rooms, leaving Smiffy to his work. 

**XXX**

The rest of the day passed mostly without incident. Ross was back on his feet after only an hour or two, Smiffy stayed in his lab doing research, and Trott managed not to get set on fire.

Smiffy was still confused about the explosion. He remembered it fairly clearly; everything had been in place, but when he activated the altar, everything on the pedestals had exploded into flux, and the lightning that shot out of the runic matrix hit him in the chest. 

But if everything had exploded, how was the wand focus created? 

Slowly, he stood up from his workbench and started pacing, examining the wand focus. It looked completely normal, and there was no residue of flux on it. After a moment, he screwed the focus onto his wand. Then he faced the outside wall and cast it, opening a portable hole.

For just a moment, the wall disappeared and he could see the outside world. And then the portal flickered red and black, and the outside world disappeared, replaced with a long dark tunnel into the Void. 

Smiffy stepped back, waiting for the portal to close. However, after waiting for several minutes, he realized that it wasn't going to close. And after another minute, he made a terrible decision.

He slowly stepped forward into the portal. It wasn't like the last few times he had used a portable hole. This time, the air around him was black, and there was a red mist along the ground. The area he was in seemed much larger than it should have been, like instead of opening a tunnel, he had opened a cavern. 

He felt cold air starting to seep into his bones, and he realized that he shouldn't be here. He quickly turned to leave, only to come face to face with a completely black silhouette, outlined by a red mist.

Smiffy didn't even have time to scream before the darkness reached out and grabbed him by the throat.

A split second later, he sat bolt upright with a scream, falling out of his desk chair and whacking his head on the floor. The impact knocked him senseless for a second, and when his vision came back, he found himself propped up on his elbows on the floor, hyperventilating. His heart rate was twice what it should have been.

And he couldn't remember what had scared him. He couldn't remember the nightmare.

A second later, Ross appeared in front of him.

“Smith, what happened?” he asked, looking worried. “What happened?”

Smiffy shook his head a bit. “I... I think I had a nightmare,” he muttered, grimacing as a sharp pain shot through his chest, right behind where the lightning had hit him.

“You _think_ you had a nightmare?”

Smiffy nodded. “I can't remember what it was...”

He slowly nodded. “Uh huh.... I uh... I think we should take you to Trott...”

Smiffy rolled his eyes. “Why do we have to tell Trott about this?”

“Because he told me you had a night terror last night and I should keep an eye on you,” said Ross quickly.

Smiffy glared at him.

“Trott also said if you came willingly, he would stop bugging you about it, and he would stand against a wall and let you throw darts at him.”

“Let's go.”

Smiffy jumped to his feet, but as soon as he was upright, he was overcome with a wave of dizziness, and it was suddenly a struggle to breathe. He slumped against his desk and Ross grabbed his arm, pulling him upright.

“What the hell?!” exclaimed Ross.

“That hurt...” choked out Smiffy, clutching his chest as he tried to inhale.

“C'mon, let's get you to Trott,” said Ross. He started to move, but Smiffy cried out in pain.

“Stop! Don't move...” They both froze, Smiffy grimacing and struggling to breathe while Ross held on to him to keep him upright. They stayed this way for several minutes before the pain finally passed, and Smiffy was able to move again. The episode left him drained and dizzy.

Carefully, Ross helped him over to the elevator, and they went downstairs to find Trott. Luckily, he was right near the elevator when they got downstairs, so he and Ross dragged Smiffy down to the lab he had set up a while ago. It was full of medical supplies and machines and all sorts of dangerous looking needles. 

They brought Smiffy over to the bed in the center of the room and helped him onto it. Trott propped up the head of the bed so Smiffy wasn't lying flat on his back. Then he started to hook him up to various machines.

“If you stick a needle in my arm again I'll shove my shoe up your ass,” warned Smiffy when he saw Trott coming at him with an IV.

Trott stared at him for a moment before shrugging. “If you're sure...” Then he turned and went over to a table off to the side of the room and poured whatever was in the syringe he was carrying into a small cup. He brought the cup back over and held it out to Smiffy. “Drink this.”

Smiffy glared at him. “And what exactly is this...?”

“It'll put you to sleep for a bit so I can run a few tests, just to see if I can find out why you're having night terrors. At first I thought it was because you had a fever, but apparently it's something else,” explained Trott. “Here.”

Smiffy looked back and forth between Trott and the cup of medicine a few times before reluctantly taking it and downing it in one gulp. Then he threw the cup back at Trott, grimacing at the taste.

“Disgusting...” he muttered.

“Well, if you didn't want to drink it, you-”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck off,” growled Smiffy. “Now how long does this take to-”

He suddenly stopped. He swayed for a minute before falling back against the pillow, unconscious.

“You should drug him more often,” mumbled Ross.

“Trust me, I've thought about it,” said Trott as he turned to face one of the monitors Smiffy was hooked up to. A look of confusion and concern crossed his face.

“What's wrong?” asked Ross, looking at the monitor.

“This is strange...” muttered Trott, glancing at Smiffy before looking back at the screen. “Normally when you sleep, everything slows down, but look. His heart rate, breathing, and brainwave activity are all increased.”

“So what does that mean?” asked Ross.

“I'm not sure...” said Trott. “But I don't think-”

He was cut off when Smiffy suddenly jolted upright and vomited up the medicine. He sat there coughing and choking for a minute, struggling for breath. 

After the shock wore off, Trott pulled off the soiled blanket and started unhooking him from the machines, while Ross put an oxygen mask on him. The wound on his chest started to bleed through his shirt.

Smiffy seemed delirious, not speaking or knowing what was going on. He didn't really respond when Ross and Trott hoisted him to his feet and dragged him upstairs to the elevator. He couldn't hear their panicked voices talking to him, trying to find out what happened. He didn't try and light them on fire when they pulled off his sweaty and bloody clothes and put him in something clean. And as soon as they put him in his bed and threw a blanket over him, he slipped back into the void of sleep.

Trott and Ross stared at him for a moment before turning to look at each other.

“Okay, what the fuck just happened?” asked Ross.

Trott shook his head. He had no idea, but whatever it was, it wasn't good...


	4. Void

Ross woke up to the sound of panic.

He sat up, confused and tired. It was the middle of the night and everything was calm and quiet, but he could still hear a voice, even though he was the only one in his room. 

_“H-hello...? Is... is any-... anybody t-there...? Hello...?”_

Ross sat there looking around for another moment before suddenly realizing with a jolt of fear that the voice belonged to Smiffy. A second later, he spotted his headset on his bedside table, which he had accidentally left on.

He quickly grabbed the headset and put it to his ear.

“Smith? Are you okay?”

He heard a gasp from the other end of the line.

_“Ross!”_ His voice cracked, and he was still clearly panicked.

“What's going on?” asked Ross frantically. “Where are you?”

_“I... I don't k-know... I t-think I was s-sleepwalking... I don't know where I am... It's... it's cold a-and dark... I c-c-can't s-see much b-but I can hear w-wind and m-monsters... It sounds like there Endermen nearby...”_

Ross wasn't sure if he was stuttering because he was cold or because he was afraid. He knew what it was like to wake up alone in strange places, but Smiffy didn't. 

“It'll be okay, we're going to come find you,” said Ross quickly as he jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. “Can you tell where you are? What can you see?”

_“I c-can't see much... It's so dark... There are... s-stone bricks... and I think I can s-see some stairs...”_ He paused, and Ross heard him shiver. _“It's s-so c-cold...”_

“Can you see anything else?” asked Ross as he pulled on a jacket and shoes. “Can you go up the stairs and get a good look around?”

It sounded like Smiffy started to say something, but he stopped with a cry of pain. Ross froze, holding his breath as he listened to his friend gasping for air and whimpering in pain. 

“Smith...?” he choked out, not daring to move. 

There was a long minute of silence before Smiffy spoke again.

_“M-my foot... I-it's bleeding, and... and there... there's b-barbed wire w-wrapped around it... I can't... I can't move...”_

“J-just hang on,” said Ross quickly, trying to stay as calm as possible. “We-”

Without warning, the signal cut out.

Ross froze, but all he could hear on the other end was static. A split second later, he turned and sprinted into Trott's room. He jumped on the bed and smashed into the snoring walrus, waking him up.

“Ah, what the fuck Ross!” exclaimed Trott, pushing Ross off the bed.

“We've got a serious problem,” stammered Ross, his hands shaking. 

Trott sat up and looked at him, any drowsiness wearing off. “What happened?”

“Smith's gone.”

**XXX**

The second Ross' voice cut out, Smiffy froze, too scared to move. He had never been this afraid before in his life.

A shudder ran through him. He was freezing cold, and he was in too much pain to stand or even move. He couldn't breathe, he was shivering violently, and he could smell the blood coming from his foot. 

And then he realized something. The blood was laced with the smell of ozone. He wasn't smelling his own blood. 

Then he heard it. A long, high pitch grating noise. Just beyond his range of vision, he could see a silhouette moving in the shadows. Whatever it was was running a clawed hand along the wall.

“W-who's there...?” he called out, against his better judgment.

The silhouette continued to pace around the perimeter of the room, staying on the edge of the shadows. 

Smiffy gulped, trying desperately to take a deep breath. “Who are you?”

The shadow stopped. It turned towards him, and Smiffy could see flecks of red smoke slowly rising off the figure's shoulders.

Then it spoke in a calm voice as soft as a whisper. 

“I'm lost, just like you.”

Suddenly, it vanished, and there was a crackle of static as Smiffy's headset regained connection. 

**XXX**

Trott and Ross were almost out the door when their headsets screeched to life as the connection returned. 

“Smith!” exclaimed Ross. “Is that you? Are you okay?”

“Where are you?!” exclaimed Trott, speaking at the same time as his friend. 

Smiffy was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke in a panicked whisper.

_“There's something in here with me...”_

Then the connection cut off again.

They were silent for a minute. Then Trott saw the impending panic attack that was about to happen, so he grabbed Ross' arm.

“Don't start panicking!” he exclaimed, sounding frantic himself. “We need to stay calm.”

Ross quickly nodded, forcing himself to breathe deeply as they stepped outside into the night. They were both shocked by how cold the air was – it must have been below freezing. The wind was howling.

“How are we going to find him...?” he asked.

“With this,” said Trott, pulling a small hand-held device out of his pocket. “This is the same thing I use to find you after a full moon. I'm trying to track his teleporter, but...” He stopped and stared at the machine, shook it a bit, then whacked it with his flipper. “It's not working...”

“What do you mean it's not working?!” exclaimed Ross, half shouting. 

Trott shook his head, glaring at the device and trying to intimidate it into working. He turned and glanced at Ross.

“What did Smith say again? When you asked him where he was?”

“Uh... he said it was cold and windy, and he could hear monsters. He said he could see some stairs, and the ground was made of stone bricks.”

“Stone bricks, huh...?” muttered Trott. He looked at his device and carefully adjusted it so that instead of scanning at their current elevation, it scanned at an elevation deep below the surface.

“THERE!” he suddenly shouted. 

Ross looked at the screen. “How the hell did he get all the way down there...?”

Trott shook his head. “Doesn't matter, does it? Let's go get him.”

They took out their swords and ran towards the rogue-like dungeon just beyond the walls.

**XXX**

There was a faint crackling noise as the silhouette appeared again and resumed pacing around the room. Smiffy watched it carefully, his eyes blurry from the pain in his foot and chest. 

As if the monster could sense his pain, his weakness, it slowly stalked towards him. As it came closer, Smiffy saw that he had been wrong. He thought the shadowy figure would look different when it stepped into the tiny shred of light coming through a crack in the ceiling. However, it's appearance didn't change. The figure was perfectly black and featureless, the only light coming from the red smoke that seemed to illuminate it and separate it from the shadows.

The most unsettling thing about this was that this man – this monster – seemed so familiar. He was certain he had seen it before.

“You're injured,” commented the shadow man as he stalked in a tight circle around the Mage. 

“W-why should you c-care?” growled Smiffy, unable to stop himself from shivering long enough to sound intimidating. 

The shadow didn't answer. Instead it silently crept around and looked at Smiffy's foot.

“At first I thought it was barbed wire...” said the shadow. Smiffy couldn't get over how soft and human the voice sounded. It almost seemed shy. “Now that I look closer,” it continued, “it looks like you stepped on a poison spike trap and it got stuck. Hm... I used to know someone who used these a lot...”

The more this shadow spoke, the more unsettled Smiffy became. There was a memory in the back of his mind that was struggling to surface, and every instinct told him to run. However, his foot was too damaged to run, and he couldn't fight, because at the moment he couldn't feel his hands. 

The shadow turned to face him. Unnerved, Smiffy tried to scoot away from it, but it felt like the wire had caught onto something on the floor, anchoring him in place. 

“Oh, that's not good...” whispered the darkness.

Smiffy gulped. “W-w-what are y-you t-t-talking about...?”

“You've stopped shivering,” it observed. “You do know what that's a sign of, right?”

“... Hypothermia...” he muttered, suddenly understanding why he couldn't feel his hands.

The figure nodded, and at that moment Smiffy realized he had seen this creature before in his nightmares. But that wasn't what was itching in his mind. He had seen this monster a long time ago. He was certain of it. But where...? 

The red smoke rising off of the shadow began to glow slightly brighter. “You do realize...” it said, it's voice suddenly sounding much more sinister, “... that if your friends don't find you soon, you'll die...”

Then, with a slight sigh, the monster began to pace back towards the shadows. “Y'know, I would miss you if you died...”

**XXX**

Ross and Trott burst into the dungeon and ran for the stairs. They knew they were running out of time, especially if whatever was stalking Smiffy was dangerous.

“He's right at the bottom,” said Trott, looking at the scanner. “Right by the stairs.”

Ross nodded, and they started running down into the rogue-like. Surprisingly – and alarmingly – there were hardly any monsters. They only ran across a few zombies and spiders. This was especially unnerving. Trott always thought of mobs as fish. They had a hoard mentality and were always hungry, always where the food was. 

But if there was food and all the fish suddenly left, that usually meant there was a shark nearby.

With this thought eating away at the back of his mind, he became more and more anxious that Smiffy was in the water bleeding while the shark circled him, preparing for an attack.

**XXX**

It took them ten minutes to reach the bottom of the dungeon. They looked around in a panic, swords out, ready to fight whatever came at them.

“Smith!” called Ross. 

There was no response.

Holding torches to ward off the darkness, they slowly began to creep around in search of their missing friend. 

“Hey Ross,” said Trott after another minute of searching and finding the large room empty. “Could you possibly turn into a dog again and try and sniff him out?”

“I'm not a fucking bloodhound,” muttered Ross, his concern overriding his desire to punch Trott for that request. 

Suddenly, as Trott was walking, he kicked something. It skidded a few feet in front of him, so he knelt down to look.

When he realized what it was, he felt his blood freeze.

“Ross...” he muttered.

“What is it?” asked Ross, coming over to see what Trott was gaping at. However, when he saw the object on the ground, he felt his heart stop.

Smiffy's teleporter was sitting on the ground. There was no blood – no sign of a struggle whatsoever. 

“He's not here...” muttered Ross. “He... he was never here...”

They were silent for a minute before Trott stood up and started pacing.

“I think I'm going to start panicking now, is that okay with you?!” he exclaimed. “What are we going to do now?! How the fuck are we going to find him?!”

Then he realized that Ross was holding still, looking at the teleporter.

“Ross? Why aren't you panicking?”

“I can't hear the wind down here...” he muttered. He looked around at the walls and started pacing a bit. “I can't hear any Endermen either...”

Trott's eyes widened. “You... you don't think he's still sleeping, do you...?” 

Ross was quiet for a moment before suddenly gasping. “I think I know where he is. Follow me.”

Then he and Trott ran back up the stairs, not noticing the spiral that had been scratched into the far wall. 

**XXX**

Smiffy was curled up in the fetal position now, doing his best to conserve his warmth. 

The shadow stood over him, looking down at him. It was standing so close to him that he could feel the cold it was emitting. 

“W-w-what do y-you w-want...?” stammered Smiffy, his voice growing weaker. 

“I need your help, just like you need mine,” said the voice. It sounded stronger now. “You see, I used to be just like your friend... what was his name? Ridge?”

Smiffy turned and glared sidelong at the silhouette. 

“I made a few... mistakes,” said the shadow. “I was cursed, and banished. And if you help me...”

It paused for effect.

“If you help me... I'll turn you human.”

Smiffy froze, his eyes wide and his mind blank. Human...? It had been so long since he had been a human. 

The shadow seemed to sense his trepidation. Suddenly, Smiffy felt the ground below him ripple with magic. He looked down and was shocked to see that the ground had become reflective like a mirror. He saw himself – not the green monster, but who he had been before. He saw red hair and blue eyes and the shocked expression on his pale but definitely flesh colored human face. 

He slowly put his hand against the reflection – in the mirror, it was flesh colored, but when he actually looked down at his hand, he saw the familiar green skin. And when he looked back, the illusion had broken, and he saw himself as he looked.

And then he realized the shadow had been standing over him. He could see it's reflection in the mirror.

Then something clicked in his mind. With a gasp, he whipped around to face the figure. 

“I remember you...” he stammered, attempting to crawl backwards and away from the monster. “From the Skylands... “

The monster stood there, as if it were waiting.

Smiffy gulped. “Void...”

“You woke me up,” said Void calmly. “You released me into the world. I was hoping you might help again.”

Smiffy shook his head, his expression a mixture of disgust and fear. “I'll never help you...” he growled.

Void sighed. “I had a feeling you wouldn't make this easy... I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way.”

He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Smiffy by the throat, lifting him off the ground. As this happened, more red smoke burst forth from its skin, surrounding it. A pair of glowing bright red eyes appeared within the smoke.

Smiffy screamed, and a split second later, he sat bolt upright, still screaming. Ross and Trott were sitting in front of him. He was awake. 

The scream cut off and he started coughing and struggling for breath, clutching his throat where Void had grabbed him. A second later, he started coughing up blood. 

Ross and Trott were right next to him, hugging him and warming him up as he shivered and convulsed and coughed. And there they stayed, in the small hut at the edge of the Farlanders' village, waiting until the bleeding stopped.


	5. Breathe

Smiffy lay unconscious on an examination table, an oxygen mask over his face and an IV stuck in his arm, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and sweatpants. He hadn't woken up since they found him, frozen and screaming on the edge of the Farlands. 

Trott sat at his desk in the corner of the room, staring down a microscope and fiddling with several machines. He was examining the blood that Smiffy had been coughing up for the past few hours. When this kept happening, however, Trott took a scan of his chest and was now waiting for the images to develop. 

Ross sat in a chair next to the table, quietly talking to Smiffy and trying to get him to wake up. He was worried, because his friend was pale and sweaty and shaking. It looked like he was struggling to breathe, even with the oxygen mask on. 

He was muttering in his sleep. It took Ross a minute, but he finally realized what he was saying.

He was saying “void.”

This continued for another half hour until the sun rose. That was when Smiffy finally stirred. He shifted a bit and slowly blinked his eyes open, looking dazed and confused and feverish. 

“R-Ross...?” he mumbled, his voice weak and hoarse. “Wha-... what happened...?”

“You were sleepwalking, mate,” said Ross. “You ended up in the Farlanders village. Nearly froze to death though...”

Smiffy thought back, but the memories from the event were hazy. He remembered cold and pain and especially fear. However, just when he managed to catch a glimpse of the shadowy red being that had haunted him, a crippling jolt of pain shot through his chest, and he grimaced, unable to breathe for a moment.

“What's wrong?” asked Ross, suddenly sounding frantic. 

“It hurts...” he choked out, one hand clutching his chest and the other hand gripping the edge of the table. 

“There's a good reason for that,” said Trott, sounding unusually somber as he stood on the other side of the table Smiffy was lying on. He was holding a piece of paper. 

“What's that...?” asked Smiffy quietly.

Trott didn't make eye contact with him. “While you were asleep, I did a scan to see if I could find out why you couldn't breathe and why you were coughing up blood... This is what I found.”

He handed the paper to Smiffy. The image showed his ribcage and lungs, but something wasn't right. There were unnatural black growths stretching like veins all over his lungs.

“What is this...?” he choked out, staring at the image.

Trott sighed. “I uh... I analyzed the blood you were coughing up, and I found traces of flux.”

Smiffy and Ross looked up at him, horrified.

“There's flux growing in your lungs like a cancer,” said Trott, doing his best to repress his emotions. “It appears to be malignant... and it's growing faster than anything I've seen. Optimistically, we have about a week to find a cure.”

“Before what...?” asked Smiffy, his voice low. However, before Trott could answer, he looked down and lifted his shirt. He saw that the black lightning scars around the stitched-up wound on his chest were gone, but the purple ones had spread. He should have known...

“Before it reaches your heart and kills you...” spat out Trott, unable to stop his voice from cracking this time. He had no idea how other doctors were able to deliver this news on a regular basis.

Ross sat in horrified silence, waiting to see how Smiffy would react. He expected his friend to be upset, of course, but he didn't expect him to get angry.

Smiffy sat up, crying out at the pain. Then, before Trott or Ross could stop him, he pulled out his IV and took off the mask. Then he stood up, nearly collapsed from the pain, and then regained his footing before either of his friends could help. He stormed over to the elevator and zapped up to his lab, Ross and Trott right behind him. 

They watched uncertainly as Smiffy stormed over to his desk and angrily started flipping through a book.

“Here,” he said, finding the page he needed. “This should cure it, right Trott?” He shoved the book in Trott's face, allowing him to see a recipe for some sort of medicinal paste made using an ethereal bloom. 

“This... this could actually work...” said Trott in amazement. “Wait, do you have everything you need to make it?”

“Nope. And that's where you two come in,” he said, taking the book back. “Trott, I need you to go out and find as many Shimmerleaf flowers as possible. Ross, take this –” he threw a small golden bag at him – “and go get as much taint stuff as you can.”

“Won't I get poisoned too?” asked Ross nervously.

“You're a lycanthrope,” grumbled Smiffy. “You're immune to pretty much anything that isn't silver.”

“But we'll both be gone,” said Trott. “What if you need something?”

“I can handle myself,” Smiffy growled, refusing to believe there was anything wrong with him, even though simply standing was causing him a tremendous amount of pain. He heard Ross and Trott talking to him, but he didn't respond. After a few minutes of the cold shoulder, they left.

When he heard them leave, he turned around to look, and he saw that Trott had left an emergency air tank and oxygen mask right next to his desk. He quickly went over and used it, grateful that his friends didn't have to see his weakness. 

**XXX**

Trott had several major difficulties finding the flowers Smiffy needed. Not only were they rare to begin with, but the sudden wave of freezing cold weather seemed to have diminished their numbers even further. 

He had no idea what was happening with the weather, but he knew it started the day Smiffy was infected after being hit by the lightning.

Trott flew around for the majority of the day until he finally found three Shimmerleaf flowers. He just hoped it was enough.

As he flew back, he ran into Ross, who was cut and bruised from fighting various flux monsters. Together, they walked back to the Marble Tower. When they crossed the drawbridge, they noticed that the moat had frozen over. And when they went inside and traveled upstairs to Smiffy's workshop, they found him upright and working as if everything was fine. He was even dressed properly, wearing his normal attire minus the jacket and vest. He claimed that the pain had faded.

Trott knew better, though. He saw that Smiffy had used up most of the tank while they had been gone, and he saw the bottles of pain medication on his desk. He could even see that his friend was slowly becoming more translucent, which only happened under very bad and very extreme circumstances. 

When he brought this up, however, Smiffy became completely closed off. When Trott suggested he lay down or eat something, he shot lightning at his feet.

This became a recurring pattern over the following two days.

Smiffy spent all of his time in his workshop and no time resting. Over the course of those two days, he attempted to synthesize a cure, but it was difficult magic. Throughout those days, Ross or Trott would come and tell him he needed to eat or sleep, and he would shoot lightning at their feet until they left. 

What they didn't know was that he couldn't eat or sleep. Instead of spreading slowly and normally like flux usually does, his cancerous form of flux had grown up into his throat and was choking him. He couldn't breathe while he was laying down, and he couldn't swallow solid food either. Even water was a struggle.

The longer he worked and the less he slept, the harder it was to breathe. Finally, on the second night of his search for the cure, everything seemed to catch up to him. 

Ross had come to check on him. It was late, and he was worried. However, instead of waltzing into the room and trying to give Smiffy an ultimatum like Trott had been doing, he hid in the elevator and watched.

Smiffy seemed to be moving normally, but his movements were slowed and looked painful. Suddenly, something went wrong, and Smiffy dropped like a sack of marble. Ross ran to him and quickly moved him into an upright position so that he would be able to breathe. When he did this, however, he saw the full extent of how sick his friend was.

His skin was mostly translucent now, and he was shaking in pain and gasping for breath. The top half of his shirt was unbuttoned, and because he was so transparent, Ross could see the dark masses of solid flux sitting heavily in upper chest and throat. 

Ross shook his head a bit before picking Smiffy up. He gave a small grunt of distress, looking like he wanted to fight but was too weak.

“Easy mate,” said Ross quietly as he carried his friend to the elevator. “You're exhausted. You need some sleep.”

“Can't...” he choked out, weakly clutching his throat. 

“Don't worry,” he said, his voice soft. “We'll make sure you keep breathing...”

Smiffy couldn't even come up with a reply before the exhaustion and pain overcame him.

**XXX**

He woke up the next morning in his bed, propped upright with a needle stuck in his arm. There was an oxygen mask over his face again, but he knew that wasn't what kept him breathing while he slept. He looked around, first noticing the chair next to his bed. Somebody had kept watch over him.

The next thing he noticed was the tube on the table. It was long and thin and attached to an air pump. It was covered with blood and clumps of flux. That was the thing that had kept him breathing, that had pumped air directly into his lungs courtesy of the tube fed down his throat. He was glad they had taken it out before he woke up.

Glancing down, he pulled his shirt open a bit and saw through his transparent skin that the flux had spread even further to the point where his lungs were almost completely encased. It hadn't even tried to go for his heart yet, but he could feel that it had advanced further up his neck to the point where it was just at his jaw. It was almost like he could taste it. 

Painfully, he sat upright. He pulled the IV out of his arm – a dangerous habit that he knew he shouldn't get into – and he took off the mask. At this point, it made no difference whether he wore it or not. He could barely breathe either way. Then he clambered out of bed, put his shoes on, and forced himself to walk upright as he made his way over to the elevator and down to his workshop. 

He worked all day, fighting against his own body. He kept a mirror on his desk so he could see how far the flux was spreading. By the time the sun was starting to set, it had spread up the back of his neck and was running up the back of his head. 

Trott and Ross came by nearly every thirty minutes on the dot to check on him. That was when he stopped lying.

He stopped telling them he was fine. He told them how much pain he was in and how he could barely take in enough air to talk. But he told them he was so close to a cure. He told them he needed to focus or he would be dead by midnight. 

After that, they kept checking on him, but they didn't say anything. They just stopped by to make sure he was still conscious and breathing. 

It happened at sunset.

Smiffy stood next to his cauldron, holding his last Shimmerleaf flower. The others had been destroyed by his failure to create an Ethereal bloom. This was his last chance. 

He double checked the recipe. He triple checked it. He made sure everything was right, because this time his life depended on it. Then he threw the ingredients into the cauldron.

And then a second later he was holding an Ethereal bloom. He would have screamed if he had still been able to use his vocal cords. 

Quickly carrying the precious flower over to his workbench, he began the procedure of liquifying it. He wouldn't be able to swallow it though – he needed to inject it. He ground the flower into a fine powder and poured it into a small glass jar. Then he cast a simple spell over the powder, and it slowly began to turn to liquid.

Knowing the process would take several minutes, he capped the bottle and set it on his desk. The worst thing to happen now would be for him to spill it or knock the bottle over, so he stepped to the other side of the room. He paced back and forth in front of the window, looking out at the sunset and ignoring the feeling that his chest was imploding. It wouldn't matter soon.

Suddenly, he heard a small chiming noise, and he looked over and saw that the cure had been synthesized. The bright blue liquid in the jar seemed to glow even from across the room.

He took one step towards it when everything went wrong. 

He suddenly collapsed, freezing cold and completely unable to breathe. He could barely move. 

Shaking, he grabbed the mirror and looked in it, watching in horror as veins of flux appeared around his eyes. A split second later, something even worse happened. The whites of his eyes turned black, and his irises and pupils became a solid glowing red. 

Suddenly, he convulsed and started coughing up blood. The seizure was so violent that he dropped the mirror, shattering it. He couldn't scream. He couldn't move. He no longer had control over his body.

And then he was still and calm. He breathed deeply through now fully functional lungs. 

Smiffy was gone.

Void had taken over. 

**XXX**

Trott and Ross came running in only a minute later, alerted by the sound of the mirror shattering. 

Smiffy had gone. Trott saw the tiny bottle of liquid cure sitting on his desk, so he quickly picked it up and pocketed it.

“Trott...” Ross choked out from the other side of the room. 

The walrus quickly came over and was shocked to see a bloody shattered mirror laying on the ground.

And then he saw what Ross was staring at.

There was a very familiar spiral drawn on the wall. And it was drawn in blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's something for you guys to think about: who is Void? Who did he used to be?


	6. Cry for Help

Trott and Ross stayed up all night running around outside looking for Smiffy, but they couldn't find him. They tried to track his teleporter, but it was offline. He didn't have his headset with him either – they found it stuck to the wall, frozen in a clump of coagulated blood. 

After that first night of panicked running in circles and screaming and one 47 minute crying session by the walrus, they realized they would need to try something different if they wanted to find him. 

They knew that something bad would happen if they didn't find him soon. They both recognized the spiral that had been drawn on the wall, but neither of them could remember what it meant. Just that it was dangerous. That it marked something bad. 

They searched all day until the sun set. That was when the cold drove them back inside. Every day it got colder and windier and cloudier. The clouds were almost completely black, even at noon. 

Finally, after two days of scouring every village, cave, and dungeon, they realized they needed help.

“Who would we ask though?” asked Ross after Trott pitched the idea. He nearly had to shout over the howling wind, seeing as they were standing in a field between the nearby village and the Farlander village where they found Smiffy.

“I think you know who we have to ask,” said Trott, his voice grim.

Ross grimaced. “Not him...” he groaned. “The last time he was here I got shot. Three times!”

“I know, but he brought you _and_ Smith back to life,” said Trott, trying not to remember shooting Ross and holding Smiffy while he bled out. 

Ross groaned. “Okay, fine... how do we contact him?”

“You already did.”

Trott and Ross whipped around, shocked to see Ridge standing right behind them.

“Wha-... How did you know...” stammered Trott.

“I was attracted by all the chaos,” said Ridge, casually looking around. 

Ross and Trott looked around as well, not seeing anything.

“What chaos?” asked Ross.

Two seconds later, there was an enormous explosion and the village caught fire. Villagers ran past them, burning and screaming.

Nobody made a move to help them, because at that second Smiffy's teleporter came back online.

“Ross!” exclaimed Trott. “He's at the Farlander village again.” Then they turned and sprinted towards the Farlands with Ridge trailing behind them, curious to see why he had been summoned here when there was a much more interesting and potentially dangerous flux anomaly back home. 

Ross and Trott sprinted into the village, instantly knowing which house Smiffy was in... mainly because there were three Ender Golems trying to get inside.

“How do we get past them...?” muttered Ross as he and Trott ducked behind a wall and peeked out at the three giants reaching inside the building and scratching at the walls.

“Okay, the one on the left looks smaller than the other two, maybe if we both try and-”

Trott was cut short when a golden light hit all three of the Golems, paralyzing them. They turned around to see Ridge standing behind them.

“Well if I'm here I might as well help,” said Ridge with a shrug. “Call it an apology for what happened last time I was here.”

“Right...” muttered Ross nervously. He and Trott then ran into the building.

Smiffy was leaning against the far wall, unconscious. His shirt was a bit torn and bloody, most likely from getting past the Golems. They ran over to him and knelt down next to him. Ross shook his shoulder a bit.

“Smith...? Can you hear me...?” he asked quietly.

For a moment, he didn't move. Then he groaned and slowly blinked his bright blue eyes open. 

“Guys...?” he coughed out, sounding exhausted. “W-what happened...? Where are we?”

“We were hoping you could tell us what happened,” said Trott as he took a bottle of water out of his bag. “Here, drink this.”

Smiffy snatched the bottle out of his hands and drank it as fast as he could, clearly dehydrated from not drinking anything for the past three days. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up, seeing Ridge for the first time.

“What's he doing here...?” he asked quietly. 

“He's uh... he's here to help...” said Ross, glancing at Ridge.

Smiffy shifted a bit, clearly nervous about seeing Ridge again, but when he moved he grimaced.

“What's wrong?” asked Trott.

“My back...” he muttered, doubling over. “I think I cut it...”

“Hold still, let me look,” said Trott, scooting over so that he was behind Smiffy. Ross and Ridge looked as well, seeing that his shirt wasn't torn, but it was bloodstained on the back. Trott carefully lifted his shirt, and all three of them froze in shock and fear.

The very same spiral that had been drawn on the wall in blood was now _burned_ into Smiffy's back. 

“What is it?” asked Smiffy, who couldn't see any of their faces. “Is it bad?”

“Nothing too serious,” said Trott as he quickly lowered Smiffy's shirt again. “Just some cuts and bruises, nothing to be worried about.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because it really hurts... It feels like it's burning...”

“Well some of the cuts are quite deep, and they may be getting infected,” Trott quickly lied. “I'll give you medicine for it when we get back home.”

At that moment, Ridge turned and quickly left the building, the trio staring after him. 

“Where's he going?” mumbled Smiffy.

“No idea,” said Ross, who had started to clean some of the cuts on Smiffy's hands. 

“Smith, do you remember what happened?” asked Trott. “Do you remember how you got here?”

Smiffy shook his head. “I can barely remember anything...” he muttered. “I was in my lab... I think I tripped or fell down, I don't remember, but next thing I know I'm in here...”

“Well at least you found a warm building this time,” commented Ross. “The last one you were in didn't have any doors or windows. 

“Is it still cold outside?” asked Smiffy, sounding slightly concerned.

“It's getting colder every day, mate,” said Trott. “We don't know what's causing it.”

“Hold on...” said Ross, sounding surprised. They both looked at him and saw that he had unbuttoned Smiffy's shirt in order to clean a cut on his shoulder, but he was staring at his chest. “Your flux is gone.”

At that moment, Smiffy realized he could breathe again. “How... wha-... how did that happen...?”

None of them could speak. Only three days ago, Smiffy had been dying, suffocating as the flux destroyed his lungs. Now he was fully healthy again and without a single trace of flux. The wound where he had been struck by the lightning was still there though, and it looked like it had been reopened several times.

Trott started to think about the small jar stored safely away in his inventory, the one containing the cure. How was the flux gone if Smiffy didn't have a cure...? Trott wasn't sure, but he decided he should keep the cure safe for the moment. Just in case.

After this long moment of confusion passed, they decided to head home. However, as soon as Smiffy moved to stand, he instantly fell back to the floor and would have hit pretty hard if Ross hadn't caught him. When they asked him what was wrong, he said he felt dizzy and weak. Trott realized it was also because he hadn't eaten in three days – no, more than three days; he couldn't swallow solid food when he was still sick – so they stayed in the building and gave Smiffy some food to help him regain his strength.

They stayed there for another hour until it started to get dark. Also, Ross saw one of the Ender Golems starting to move, so they decided to get as far away from the Farlanders village as possible before they woke up. 

It had gotten much colder and darker outside, so Ross gave Smiffy his jacket, and Trott gave him the furry hat he was wearing. Trott was used to the cold and Ross had an extra layer of fur protecting him, but Smiffy was dressed in only a torn shirt and pants. And the last thing they wanted was for him to get sick again. 

They let Smiffy walk on his own after he insisted he could, but Ross stayed close to him in case he fell again. 

As soon as they were out of the building and past the Ender Golems, Smiffy started to look nervous.

“What's wrong?” asked Ross.

“I don't know,” he replied. “Something... something doesn't feel right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Trott, who was walking on the other side of Smiffy. 

He shook his head. “I don't know... It just feels like something bad is about to happen...”

“Don't worry mate,” said Ross. “We'll keep an eye out for-”

Then Ross stepped on a trip wire that had been hidden by the tall grass. There was a sharp noise and the _thunk_ of metal lodging itself into flesh immediately followed. 

They all froze and looked down, shocked to see an arrow lodged into Ross' stomach. They stood and watched in horror as a small splotch of blood began to slowly spread across his white shirt.

A second later, it started to snow.

“Guys...” choked out Ross, his voice suddenly tiny and scared. He slowly sank to his knees. 

That was when Smiffy and Trott sprung into action. They took Ross by the arms and hoisted him upright as carefully as they could. That didn't stop him from screaming though. 

As soon as he was upright, they half dragged half carried him back to the Marble Tower as fast as possible. He remained conscious the whole time, trying to keep from screaming.

They made it back within minutes, just as the storm began to intensify. However, as soon as they crossed the frozen moat, Ridge appeared in front of them, looking frantic.

“Don't-” was all he had the chance to say before the upper right portion of the tower exploded and caught fire. 

After watching the top portion of the tower burn for a few seconds, Ross lost consciousness from the shock of seeing his building partially destroyed and the pain from the arrow. It took another two minutes for Ridge's magic to put out all the fires and make it safe for them to go inside.

“Just stay on the bottom floor,” he warned as he picked up Ross and carried him inside. “This whole place was trapped. I managed to get rid of most of the explosives, I just didn't have time to get the ones up top.”

“I don't understand,” exclaimed Trott as he followed behind Ridge, having to run to keep up with his long strides. “Who could have done this?”

“I have a theory...” muttered Ridge darkly as they stepped inside and ran down to the lab.

They put Ross on the examination table and Ridge cut his shirt loose while Trott prepared his equipment. Smiffy stayed next to Ross, not sure what to do. 

“Be careful,” warned Ridge as Trott approached with a scalpel. “The arrow looks barbed, so it might be difficult to get out.”

“Right,” said Trott, his voice muffled by the surgical mask over his mouth. Then he pressed the scalpel into the wound and cut it open a few more centimeters in order to give the arrow head room to come out. Then he carefully and slowly pulled the bloody arrow out.

The second the arrow was out, Ross started convulsing and coughing up blood.

“WHAT THE SHIT?!” shouted Trott as he pulled Ross upright and pressed a wad of bandages into the wound. 

Ridge snatched the arrow and scanned it. “Uh, this thing was covered in silver powder. It's in his blood... Move.” 

He shoved Trott out of the way and stood over Ross, his hands glowing gold. A few seconds later, Ross stopped convulsing, then he stopped coughing up blood after another minute. 

“I'm drawing out all the poisoned blood,” said Ridge. “Try and sop it up.”

Trott nodded and stood on the other side of Ross, holding bandages and towels and soaking up all the blood that was drawn from the wound.

While this was happening, Smiffy was standing numb in the corner. He watched what was happening as if it weren't real. As if it were just another night terror. He really hoped it was. 

The process of drawing out the poison ended up taking several hours. About halfway through, Smiffy fell asleep in the corner, and Trott threw a blanket over him.

By the time they finally got all of the silver powder out, it was almost midnight. Outside they could hear the wind howling as the snow had turned into a blizzard. 

“Okay,” said Ridge, sounding out of breath and exhausted. “That's all I can do for now. He should probably start healing normally, but that's going to leave a scar. Maybe cause him some phantom pain...”

Trott shook his head a bit, looking at his pale and unconscious friend. “You nearly killed all of us last time you were here,” he said, looking up at Ridge. “What changed?”

“Last time I was here, I was testing you. I had everything under control,” said Ridge, wiping the blood off of his hands. “But this... I don't have any control over this. And I have a theory as to what's causing all of this, but I can't be sure yet... At least... not until I find it.”

“It? What do you mean?”

Ridge glanced around the room. “Something is hunting you three. And if it's what I think it is, then it's a good thing I came here...”

His eyes stopped scanning the room and rested on the corner, where a blanket lay discarded. Trott turned and looked, seeing that Smiffy had disappeared.

“Oh great, where did he go this time...?” muttered Trott.

“I think he's upstairs...” said Ridge, looking up at the ceiling with glowing gold eyes. “What's he doing up there...? That's where the explosion was...”

“I'll go get him,” said Trott. “You stay with Ross and make sure he keeps breathing, okay?”

Ridge nodded, and Trott turned and headed towards the elevator. He zapped up as far as he could, but the explosion had knocked out the last elevator connection, so he climbed up the ladder to the next floor.

It was freezing cold on this floor, seeing as half of the wall and ceiling had been blown away by the explosion. Snow was starting to pile into the large room, and he could see dark clouds and walls of ice flying past the hole in the wall as the blizzard raged outside. All of the lights had been knocked out by the blast, so the room was hauntingly dark. 

Then his eyes adjusted enough for him to see a silhouette against the raging storm. Smiffy was standing right next to the hole in the wall, staring out into the gale. 

“Smith!” exclaimed Trott, having to speak up over the wind. “What are you doing up here...?”

“Just... thinking...” he replied slowly, his voice quiet yet still carrying over the wind. 

“About what?” asked Trott, moving closer.

“Do you think Ross is going to be okay?” he asked, still standing eerily still. 

“Yeah...” said Trott, starting to feel nervous. Something wasn't right. “He's in good hands...”

“Good hands...” muttered Smiffy. “Good hands...”

Then, without warning, Smiffy turned around and lunged at Trott, knocking him to the ground and pinning his arms down with his knees. His eyes were glowing red, and he was holding a knife.

“Good hands, huh?” he asked, a deranged smile on his face. It was so terrifying that Trott couldn't scream. 

“How good of a doctor would you be without your hands...?” asked the monster. 

He raised his knife, prepared to slice off Trott's entire arm, when a blast of golden light hit him and sent him flying against the wall. He smashed his head against the wall and slid to the ground, completely unconscious. 

Trott looked up to see Ridge standing at the far end of the room. He quickly ran over and picked up Trott, setting him back on his shaky feet.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Trott could only frantically nod, looking back and forth between Ridge and Smiffy.

Ridge moved over to the unconscious green man, and Trott followed, noticing the splotches of blood starting to spread across the front of his shirt. He assumed the wound on his chest had once again been opened. 

“W-w-what just h-happened?” stammered Trott, shaking violently from the cold and fear. 

Ridge simply looked down at Smiffy. “We need to do something about this...”


	7. Demon

Smiffy sat upright in a chair, his arms tied behind his back and his torso tied to the back of the chair. He was still unconscious from hitting the wall, and the wound on his chest was still bleeding a bit. Ridge and Trott stood in front of him, looking at him. Trott was shivering a bit from the extreme cold, seeing as they were still on the half destroyed floor, having been unable to bring Smiffy downstairs without him being conscious. 

“What happened...?” asked Trott, shaking his head. “What's wrong with him?”

“There's a demon latched to him,” said Ridge. “A malevolent spirit that will stop at nothing to literally fuck everything up. I actually know this one... it calls itself Void.”

“How do you know?” asked Trott.

“That mark burnt into his back,” said Ridge. “That's the mark of the Void.”

Trott glanced back and forth between Ridge and the unconscious Smiffy. “Is that demon the reason he's been having night terrors? And why he keeps sleepwalking?”

Ridge nodded. “That's all it could do. This demon is weak from being inert for so long, so it's using your friend as a host... a-a vessel to feed itself with the pain and chaos it's been causing. That's what gives it strength, and you three have been spoiling it.”

Trott stood and listened, his eyes wide. “What's going to happen to Smith?”

“Well... unless we get it out fast, it'll grow to full strength and it won't need your friend anymore. If it gets to full strength, it'll tear its way out of him and most likely kill him...” 

“How did this happen?” asked Trott, trying to take in all the information.

“You're just full of questions, aren't you?” muttered Ridge. “Hold on.”

He carefully stepped forward and took Smiffy's face in his hands, which started to glow gold. Ridge closed his eyes and concentrated, listening. Suddenly, he jumped back and pulled his hands away.

“Wow, that is one angry demon...” he muttered, running his hand through his hair. “Anyways, from what I could tell, this demon has been latched to him since...” He paused, looking a bit confused. “This part didn't make sense to me. The demon has been latched to him since he pulled a lever and released it... in the Skylands?” 

Trott froze. “Oh...” he muttered. “I was wondering why that spiral looked so familiar...”

“Well at least you know what that means,” said Ridge, tilting his head to the side and looking at Smiffy as he sat there with his head hung low. “But I'm curious... if it's been attached to him for this long, why now? What woke it up?”

“He got struck by lightning about a week ago...” said Trott, his voice quiet with realization. “He was making a new wand focus and his altar exploded and he was struck by the lightning from it.”

“And that's when all the symptoms started?” asked Ridge.

Trott nodded so frantically he gave himself a headache. 

“Good old flux,” muttered Ridge with a sigh. “Essence of chaos... Do you still have the wand focus?”

“Yeah, give me a second,” said Trott before turning and running downstairs, returning a minute later with Smiffy's wand. 

Ridge took the wand and examined the focus on the end.

“Portable hole...” he muttered. “Hold on... it looks like this was made with a tainted Ender Pearl... No wonder his alter exploded, this thing is beyond chaotic! How did he even survive creating this...?”

“That's the thing,” said Trott, a bit out of breath from the run. “After he was struck, he started having breathing problems and coughing up blood, and a bit later we found flux growing in his lungs like cancer. We thought he was going to die...”

“Oh...” muttered Ridge. “I guess that's the next problem. It looks like Void is keeping him alive, and keeping the flux away. As soon as we exorcise the demon, the flux will probably come back and kill him...”

Just before Trott could tell Ridge that Smiffy had already synthesized a cure and he had it in his pocket and ready to use, Smiffy started to stir.

They both quickly stepped back as Smiffy suddenly sat upright and glared at them, his eyes glowing red. He looked at the two of them standing there and smiled, feeding off their fear. 

“A bit old fashioned, isn't it? Tying someone to a chair?” asked Void. His voice sounded like Smiffy's, but it was quiet, almost shy. It reminded Trott of smoke. 

Trott gulped. “W-what have you done with Smith?” he stammered. 

“He's still here... still watching...” said Void quietly. “But uh... I hope you know what you're going to say to him when he comes back. You'll only have a minute...”

Ridge narrowed his eyes, glaring at Void. 

“Oh, and you should probably check on the werewolf,” said Void, sounding like he had just remembered something. “Otherwise he'll only have a few minutes left as well.”

Trott was certain his heart stopped. He didn't even hear Ridge telling him to stay calm before he turned and ran back downstairs to his lab. He sprinted back over to the bed where Ross lay and threw back the blankets covering his chest. The bandages were soaked in blood, as was the blanket. 

Fast as he could, Trott cut away the bandages and saw that the stitches had come undone. He quickly fit an oxygen mask over his unconscious friend's face and grabbed a needle, stitching up the wound again.

A few minutes later, the wound was fully sutured and the bleeding had stopped. Trott took a deep, shaky breath and began to reapply clean bandages.

If it weren't for Void, then Ross would have died. 

**XXX**

Ridge and Void were still, staring at each other. Using a bit of magic, though, Ridge saw that Void had been right about Ross.

“Why did you tell him?” asked Ridge, slowly stalking a bit closer. 

“I'm not quite strong enough to feed off of depression and sadness yet,” said Void, tilting his head to the side. “Right now I need pain and chaos and panic, and that only happens when they're alive.”

Ridge shook his head. “You're farming these three like cattle, just so you can grow in strength.”

Void shrugged. “It would have been much easier if you hadn't banished me to the Void... That's where I got my name from though. I don't even remember my real name. Do you?”

Ridge was silent for several seconds. Then he turned and looked Void in the eye.

“Y'know... it's a good thing you sent Trott downstairs. That way he doesn't have to watch his friend die.”

With a sharp wave of his hand, he summoned a glowing gold sword. Then he drew it back and stepped forward, prepared to stab Void and Smiffy through the heart.

A split second before he could kill them, however, Void snapped the ropes and lunged forward, grabbing Ridge's hands and wrenching the sword from them. Ridge was so shocked that he didn't defend himself, and Void stabbed him in the center of his chest with his own sword.

He had stabbed him directly through his third heart. 

The sword disappeared a second later, and Ridge collapsed, laying flat on his back and gasping for air, clutching his chest to try and stop the bleeding. He was healing, but slowly, seeing as the heart he had been stabbed through was the one mainly responsible for his powers. 

He was losing so much blood... he couldn't talk or scream, and his vision was fading.

The last thing he saw was Void standing over him. Then he blacked out. 

A few minutes later, Trott arrived, having made sure Ross was okay. He was shocked to see Ridge lying on the floor covered in blood, so he ran over and knelt down next to him.

“Ridge, can you hear me?” he asked, putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. 

After a minute of coercion, Ridge slowly blinked his eyes open. His heart had repaired itself, so he was starting to heal faster. 

“Ridge, what happened?” asked Trott.

Ridge looked around in a daze. “He's gone...” he choked out. “They're both gone...”

Trott looked around the empty room. Ridge was right. Void and Smiffy were gone.


	8. What Hides in the Dark

It took Trott twenty minutes, a large amount of effort, and an obscene amount of swear words to drag Ridge downstairs. It didn't help that Trott was nearly half his size. 

After being stabbed, Ridge had tried to stand, but the effort rendered him unconscious almost immediately. It was too dangerous to leave him up there, especially since they had no idea where Void Smiffy was, so Trott had dragged – dropped – Ridge down the ladder and to the elevator. And now, as they finally made it to Trott's lab, he was forced to lay some blankets on the floor for Ridge, seeing as Ross was occupying the table. 

After quickly checking on Ross and making sure his stitches hadn't come undone again, he turned his attention to Ridge, who still looked sickly pale. Trott hooked him up to a heart rate monitor, but the machine became confused and the pulse seemed wildly erratic and rapid. 

Confused, Trott did a scan of his chest and was shocked when the image sharpened and revealed not one or two but _three_ hearts, all beating in an off-sync rhythm. He knew a lot about human anatomy, but he had never seen something like this before. The extra hearts didn't seem crammed in or out of place at all, which is what he would have expected. In normal humans, the right lung was larger than the left, but in Ridge, both lungs were the same size, and they were slightly displaced to make room for the third heart, which was in the center of his chest and was almost twice the size of the other two. 

The third heart was right where he had been stabbed. However, Trott continued to watch in amazement as the tissues in and around the heart visibly healed. He was so transfixed by this accelerated healing that he didn't notice Ridge wake up until he started moving. 

“Did you throw me down a flight of stairs?” asked Ridge, his words slurred a bit as he sat up and shook off his delirium. 

Trott jumped a foot in the air and whipped around. “How are you awake already? You lost a ton of blood back there!”

“You were staring at my insides, you saw how fast I heal,” said Ridge, taking the sensors off of his chest and carefully standing up. “Also, a ton? That doesn't seem like a medical term to me.”

Trott stared at him for a minute before shaking his head. “Okay... what happened upstairs? And where's Smiffy?”

“The little bastard stabbed me with my own sword,” said Ridge, poking at the wound on his chest, which was slowly closing. “Those ropes didn't do a thing. He could have broken them the second he woke up, the only reason he didn't was to mess with us. As for _where_ he is, I'm afraid I have no idea.”

“Can't you just use magic to find him?” asked Trott as he turned his attention back to Ross, who had shifted in his sleep and grimaced in pain. 

“I would,” said Ridge, grabbing a cold compress and laying it across Ross' forehead, “but I was stabbed through my third heart. That's the big one that holds most of my magic. I have to wait for it to refill before doing anything drastic.”

“Uh... how long does it take to refill?” asked Trott, staring at the strange man with three hearts. 

“That depends,” said Ridge. “If I were fully and completely drained of magic, it would take about a week to regenerate, but I didn't lose much, so I should be back to normal by morning.”

As he spoke, he reached forward and rested his hand on Ross' chest. Instead of his normal gold magic, this time his hand began to glow with bright purple magic. Ross seemed to have an easier time breathing. 

“Still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” said Ridge, taking a step back and sitting down. 

Trott looked down at his friend. “Normally he's a very fast healer...”

“Normally, he probably isn't poisoned with silver,” said Ridge. “It'll take longer for him to heal, and it'll leave a scar. How long would it normally take him to recover from a wound like this?”

Trott shrugged.

“Well, let's hope for the best,” said Ridge calmly. “Do you want to get some sleep?”

“Don't you need sleep too?” asked Trott, suddenly feeling exhausted from the stress of the day. 

“I only need about a quarter the amount of sleep that normal humans do,” said Ridge. “Basically, I sleep about once every four days. You, on the other hand, have been on an adrenaline high almost all day. Not very good for health, but hey, I'm not a doctor.”

“That's true...” muttered Trott, feeling the weight of the day crashing down on him. The nest of blankets on the floor looked so inviting...

“Get all the rest you can,” said Ridge as Trott curled up on the blankets. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day...”

**XXX**

By the time the sun came up, the wind outside seemed to have died down, and Ross had finally woken up. The wound on his chest was almost completely healed, thanks to Ridge, who had regained his full power. While Trott was still sleeping, he had explained his three hearts – where they were and what their purposes were – to Ross, who didn't seem quite as shocked about it as the walrus had. 

About half an hour later, Trott woke up and Ross shakily stood. He was a bit unsteady from all the blood loss, but he seemed to get his bearings after a few minutes. 

While Trott was helping Ross regain his balance, Ridge stared out the window. It was a beautiful sunrise. He wondered what was happening back home. He hoped everybody was okay, and that the flux anomaly that he had been investigating had sorted itself out. 

Then again, he had only been gone for a day. How much bad stuff could possibly happen in a single day?

After a minute, he turned back to Ross and Trott, who were ready to go. Cautiously, Ridge led them outside.

They were all shocked to step outside and find that it was suddenly no longer cold. The snow on the ground was rapidly melting in the comfortable summer temperatures, and the moat was quickly thawing. 

“What happened?” asked Trott, blinking his beady eyes in the bright early morning sunlight. 

Ridge narrowed his eyes, which began to glow gold. A few seconds later, he shook his head.

“He's not here,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Ross. “Who's not here? Where is here?”

“Void,” said Ridge. “He's not in this dimension anymore. That's why the weather is back to normal. He's gone, and he took your friend with him.”

Trott narrowed his eyes. He didn't like how Ridge kept calling Smiffy “their friend.” It was almost like he was trying to distance himself. To dehumanize Smiffy. Maybe make it easier to kill him?

“What does that mean?” asked Ross, looking around frantically. 

“It means Void has gained enough strength to not need a host anymore,” said Ridge. “He's probably gone back to his home plane of existence.”

“And that would be...?”

“Limbo.”

“Then we have to go after them!” exclaimed Trott. “How do we get to Limbo?”

“We'll follow them,” said Ridge hesitantly. “But be warned. That isn't my home plane of existence, so my powers are going to be severely limited there. I'll probably only have enough energy to put Smith in stasis, assuming Void is strong enough to leave him. But it won't last long, so whatever happens, it needs to happen fast. The longer we stay, the more danger we'll be in. Got it?”

Trott and Ross nodded, looking scared.

“Okay,” said Ridge. “Now we just have to find the rift they went through.”

“The what?” asked Ross.

“A rift,” explained Ridge. “It's a sort of rip in the fabric of reality, like a wound or a weak point. Places like that make it easy to cross between dimensions.”

“Okay, so how do we find it?” asked Trott.

“With this,” said Ridge, reaching into his coat and pulling out Smiffy's wand. They saw that the portable hole focus was still on. “This wand is still connected to Smith, so we can follow it to the rift.”

He turned and started to walk, and Ross and Trott ran to keep up with him.

“So what exactly is this _void_ thing?” asked Ross, who had been unconscious for the explanation the previous night. 

“As far as I know, it's a demon,” said Ridge. “My guess is that it used to be a demigod like me, and apparently I banished him to the Void.”

“Apparently?” asked Trott. “You mean you don't actually know who or what this thing is?”

Ridge sighed. “The Void exists outside of time. It's entirely possible that in the future I come across a dangerous or unstable demigod and am forced to banish him. The only reason I know this demon is because he's popped up a few times before, and I had to take care of him. But back then, I had no idea what it was, just that something from the Void was stirring up trouble...”

“Time travel...” muttered Trott in amazement. “Wow...”

“What if it came back in time to kill you and stop you from banishing it?” asked Ross.

Ridge shook his head. “Wouldn't work. That would cause a paradox. If it killed me now, I wouldn't be around to banish whoever it used to be, then it wouldn't have this form or be able to time travel or kill me, and I would still be alive to banish it. So I know that no matter what happens today, it isn't possible for it to kill me.”

“That... is very complicated....” muttered Ross.

Ridge shrugged. “As an old friend of mine once said, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.”

Then they stopped. They had reached a small tower buried into the ground, covered in moss and made of stone brick.

“Is this place important to you guys?” asked Ridge.

They both nodded.

“This was where we thought Smith was the first time he started sleepwalking,” said Trott. “His teleporter ended up here, but he was somewhere else...”

Ridge nodded. “Well then, let's go see what you missed.”

**XXX**

They quickly made their way to the bottom of the rogue-like dungeon. There were monsters again, but they kept their distance, clearly afraid of Ridge, especially after he vaporized a cheeky skeleton that tried to take a shot at them.

They reached the very bottom, and Ridge spawned in torches, lighting the place up properly. And because it was lit up, they all immediately saw the large spiral carved into the far wall. 

“The mark of the Void...” muttered Ridge, stepping forward and running his hand along the carving. “It's not just a calling card... It also a portal...”

“Smith had one of those symbols burned into his back,” reminded Trott.

“Then I guess we know how the demon got in,” muttered Ridge.

“Yeah, and how it's going to get out...” said Ross quietly. 

Ridge stepped back and took out the wand. He carefully placed the tip of it in the center of the spiral and traced it outwards. As he did so, the spiral began to glow black, and blue particles began to emanate from it. Then he took another step back and cast the wand at the glowing spiral. Instantly, the wall disappeared and a swirling black vortex was revealed before them.

“Remember,” said Ridge. “This needs to happen fast. We need to be in and out, or we'll all die. See you on the other side.”

Then he stepped through the portal and into the Void. Trott and Ross followed.

A split second later, they found themselves standing on something solid and black. They looked up and saw a building made of obsidian and dark bricks. Blood was splattered on the walls, and there were several skeletons laying around.

“Welcome to Limbo,” muttered Ridge. 

“Wait a second...” said Ross. “I know that building.”

“Me too,” said Trott. “It's the one from the Skylands! What's it doing here?”

“Let's find out,” said Ridge, holding out his hand and summoning a glowing gold sword. He started towards the door, and the other two followed him, holding their own swords.

“Okay,” Ridge said as they crept closer, “it's very important that you two stay calm. Any form of fear or panic or pain will give it strength and bring it one step closer to killing Smith. Got it?”

They nodded.

A moment later, they stepped inside.

Following the single hallway, they came to a large open room. And in the center of that room, they found Void, standing in the center of a giant glowing red spiral on the floor. He was staring right at them.

“About time you got here,” said Void, his quiet voice unnervingly calm. “Sorry to tell you, but you're too late to stop my evil plan.” He giggled at his own joke. 

Ridge took a menacing step forward, his sword glowing brighter. Void jumped back, looking scared and holding his hands up.

“Wait wait wait!” he exclaimed frantically. “I had a monologue and everything prepared, I even practiced it! That's what villains do right? Monologue? This is the part where I tell you all about my evil plan and then you try and stop me!” 

Ridge just stood there, not sure exactly what was going on. He was just glad that the confusion and rage seemed to be blocking out any of the emotions that Void fed on.

Void cleared his throat and started to fidget, as if he were a student giving a speech to the class. “Well, as I'm sure you already realized, this mark I've carved here isn't just for decoration. It's actually a portal. And this giant portal that we're all standing on leads to... wait for it... the Other World!” 

Ridge glanced at the marks on the ground, which were glowing brighter.

“You mean the Other World where everybody else is?” asked Trott, unable to stop his curiosity.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Void. “Now this portal is already connecting to the Other World, so some of the emotions from that side are starting to leak through.”

He stopped and took a deep breath. “Ah, smell that? Pain, misery, and suffering. Something terrible happened while you were gone, Ridge... There's so much pain in that world now... Remind me again, how much did you care about the people in that world? One of them was killed with Void flux...” 

Ridge froze, holding his breath. He had to keep his emotions under control.

“I can see you're wondering who died, right?” Void let out a menacing chuckle. “He came from the skies...”

Ridge felt an icy shard of fear shoot through him. A split second later, he realized his mistake.

Void turned menacing again in the blink of an eye. “Gotcha.”

Suddenly, he let out a sharp cry and dropped to the ground, convulsing. The spiral burnt into his back began to glow bright red and burn through his shirt. Then, a split second later, Smiffy's back exploded outwards in a fountain of blood, and thick black smoke came pouring out. The smoke stepped away and became solid, and Smiffy dropped to the ground, the gaping wound in his back gushing blood.

Ridge shot the last vestiges of his magic at Smiffy and put him in stasis before he could lose any more blood. Then he turned and lunged at Void, doing his best to stab him in the face. It was difficult, however, because Void kept teleporting around the room and turning to smoke whenever Ridge swiped at him. 

While Ridge and Void fought, Ross and Trott sprinted over to Smiffy, who lay face down, not moving. The stasis was the only thing keeping him alive. He wasn't bleeding, but he wasn't breathing either.

Trott looked into the wound and saw that Smiffy's spine had been destroyed, his lungs had been shredded, and his heart was almost completely crushed. His shoulder blades, collarbone, and ribs were nothing but splinters. The only reason the flux hadn't come back yet was because he was in stasis, but the second he dropped out of it he would die. 

Suddenly, across the room Ridge started losing the fight. He was stabbed several times in the stomach, but because he didn't have any magic left to heal himself with, he started losing blood and growing weaker. Void appeared to be growing stronger. He now had a solid form and had materialized black and red robes around himself. His eyes were glowing bright in the darkness.

That was when Ross decided to join the fight. He stood up, but instead of picking up his sword, he hunched over and forced a transformation. But something was different this time. It wasn't painful. It wasn't slow. And instead of simply turning into a giant furry man with claws and sharp teeth and a tail, he transformed into an actual wolf with slick black fur and piercing blue eyes.

With a snarl, he lunged forward and attacked the demon.

Void was taken off guard by the fact that there was an actual fucking wolf suddenly chewing on his neck. He reached back and grabbed Ross, flinging him over his head and against the wall near Ridge. Then he remembered that the power of the Void did strange things to werewolves...

His train of thought was interrupted when Ross tried to kill him again. By this time, Ridge was on his feet too, holding the glowing sword menacingly.

Void panicked, but then he saw that the portal was mostly open. He could make it through into the Other World.

He lunged for the portal, but just before he made it he felt sharp teeth sink into his leg and drag him backwards, shaking him and tossing him around like a rag doll. He couldn't teleport because Ross' bite was anchoring him to a solid form. He was helpless.

A split second later, Ross flipped Void over onto his back, and Ridge appeared, standing over him. Then he stabbed Void through the chest.

A blinding gold light enveloped the demon, there was a high-pitch scream, and then he was gone. The portal on the ground snapped shut and became silent. 

Void had been defeated.

After taking a moment to catch his breath and try and use a bit of magic to stop his wounds from bleeding, Ridge turned back to Smiffy and Trott.

“I think it's wearing off!” Trott cried. Sure enough, the thin gold lights that were floating around Smiffy were slowly going out.

“We need to get back right now,” gasped Ridge, bending down and picking Smiffy up. He grimaced though. Smiffy was heavy, and he was still healing.

Suddenly, Ross came and stood beside him, staring up at Smiffy. He made a small whimpering noise and used his head to gesture to his own back.

“Can you carry him?” asked Ridge, fighting the pain.

Ross nodded, so Ridge carefully laid Smiffy on Ross' back. Then they turned and sprinted back to the portal to the Overworld as fast as possible.

**XXX**

The second they were back in the Overworld, Ridge began to rapidly regenerate his magic. The very first thing he did was teleport all of them back to the lab in the Marble Towers. The next thing he did was keep Smiffy in stasis and try and stop the bleeding. Finally, he started healing himself.

He picked Smiffy up off Ross' back and laid him down on the table.

“I can keep him in stasis,” he said frantically. “Can you do anything to help?”

“I can tell you what to heal first,” stammered Trott. “F-first fix his heart and lungs, then work on his bones. We need to fix his spine and his nervous system if he's ever going to walk again.”

“Well I can't exactly put his spine back together. We left a few pieces of it back in Limbo.”

While Trott and Ridge continued to frantically yell at each other, Ross slowly paced around the edge of the room. He wouldn't allow himself to turn back into a human until Smiffy was okay. He knew he would get sick as soon as he was human again, and right now, Smiffy needed all the attention. 

So he continued to pace back and forth in the corner until he started to become tired. He noticed he was bleeding from the neck – Void must have cut him during one of the attacks – but it didn't seem severe enough to cause an issue. 

He paced for another hour until he needed to lie down. As soon as he did, Ridge and Trott made the decision to bring Smiffy out of stasis.

Ross closed his eyes when the screaming started.


	9. Missing Link

Ridge stood still, silent and covered in blood. He was looking at Smiffy, who was lying in his bed wrapped in bandages and blankets, pale and weak and also covered in blood. 

It was dark now. It had taken them seventeen hours to put everything back together, and he felt completely drained of magic. Smiffy was still in bad condition, but at least he was alive.

Ridge glanced to the left and looked at Trott, who was fast asleep in the chair next to Smiffy's bed. His lab coat was still bloodstained, and he looked exhausted. Ridge couldn't blame him. Only a few hours ago, he had been putting his friend's spine back together. 

Finally, Ridge looked down at Ross, who was curled up on the floor in the fetal position, nesting in a pile of blankets. He had remained in wolf form throughout the entire operation, and he was paying dearly for it. He had been sick almost immediately after turning back into a human, and within a minute he was unconscious. Trott had put an oxygen mask on him to help him breathe and sleep. 

Ridge knew a lot about werewolves, so he knew that turning into an actual wolf like Ross had required ten times the energy of being a regular werewolf, and because Ross had held that form for so long, he wouldn't be surprised if it took longer for him to recover than it did for Smiffy to wake up. 

He stood there looking at them for a while longer. These three reckless maniacs who had unknowingly saved the Other World and the lives of everybody there. It was a good thing they called him here and that they were able to stop Void before he could reach the others. 

Slowly, he smiled. Then he conjured up a bit of paper and scribbled two words. Then he set the piece of paper on the table next to Trott, and with one last glance around, he left, returning to the Other World. 

A few minutes later, Trott woke up. He looked around and saw the piece of paper.

It said “Stay safe.”

**XXX**

Ridge stood on top of a tall cliff, overlooking the ocean and the bay of Owl Island. He watched in a trance as they put the body in the boat and set it adrift. 

There was no wind. The water was so calm and still that it perfectly reflected the moonless night sky above. There was no telling where the ocean ended and the sky began. There was no horizon. Just an endless sky full of stars. 

He had hoped beyond reason that Void had been lying. That nobody had been killed while he was gone. But he was wrong. One day. That was all it took for one of the only people in the world he considered a friend to be attacked, poisoned, and killed. 

And as he watched the boat drifting along the starry ocean, he realized that the man from the skies was returning to the stars. 

So he stood watching the funeral. He didn't have the nerve to go down and face the others. So he stood watching as the dark boat gently drifted out into the bay, which was reflecting every star in the sky. 

When the boat had reached the edge of the bay, the first burning arrow was shot. It hit the boat dead on, and the flames began to spread. Five more arrows followed it, each one hitting its target. 

As the boat was consumed in brilliant orange flames, Ridge closed his eyes. Being stabbed in the chest multiple times was less painful than this. He felt like all three of his hearts had broken, and there was nothing he could do – there was no magic powerful enough – to heal them. 

He told himself he did the right thing, leaving and stopping Void. If he had stayed here, he may have been able to save Xephos, but for how long? Void would have killed Smiffy and Trott and left Ross to madness, then he would have escaped. He would have caused chaos. How many would have died before they stopped him? 

He opened his eyes again. The boat was beginning to sink lower in the water, the flames slowly going out. The only thing left of the boat was a shell. 

A few minutes later, it was over. The boat had disappeared, and Xephos had returned to the stars. 

He turned away and started walking. He wasn't sure where he was going, but the only thing that kept him from breaking was that he kept telling himself he did the right thing.

**XXX**

After a week and a half, Smiffy finally woke up. He was confused, not knowing what was going on, and he was still in a lot of pain from the wounds on his back. He felt weak and dizzy, both from the blood loss and the lack of eating solid food for two straight weeks. 

Looking around, he saw that he was in his room alone. He was hooked up to several machines and an IV drip, which he refrained from immediately ripping out this time. He hoped there was morphine in the drip.

Just when he was starting to wonder where Trott and Ross were, the door opened, and they both stood there, looking in. He could tell by the shock on their faces that he had been asleep for a while, and they weren't sure if he was going to wake up.

“Smith!” they both exclaimed, running into the room. They looked like they wanted to hug him but thought better of it. 

“Hello,” choked out Smiffy, his voice barely a hoarse whisper. At least it didn't hurt to talk anymore. “Want to tell me what happened?”

Trott explained the damage that had been done when Void tore his way out, and he explained that his spine and half of his internal organs were destroyed. He explained how he and Ridge used magic and science to fix him.

“Don't forget about the flux,” said Ross. Smiffy noticed that he looked pale and tired and almost as sick as he felt. Had there been another full moon lately?

“Oh yeah!” exclaimed Trott. “As soon as we brought you out of stasis, the flux came back, and it would have killed you if you hadn't made that antidote.”

“Wait...” muttered Smiffy. “My cure actually worked?”

Trott nodded. “It saved your life.”

Smiffy was so surprised by the fact that his cure had worked properly that he almost didn't hear Trott telling him that he would have a lot of trouble walking at first because of how fucked up his spine was. He did, however, clearly hear Trott telling him just how much pain he was going to be in while he was rehabilitated. 

He knew he would get past the pain, though. As long as he had his friends to help him.

“Y'know...” said Smiffy after a while. “I think I'm going to take a break from magic for a bit.”

They weren't sure if it was because of the great relief of stress or because that statement had simply been very funny, but they laughed about it for several minutes.

“Speaking of magic,” said Trott, once the laughter had ended, “I think we should destroy that wand focus.”

“Good idea,” said Ross. “I mean, if Void wasn't killed, that's probably where he would hide.”

Smiffy nodded. “Let's throw it in lava just to be safe.”

Trott nodded, and he went to go find the wand focus, but he returned a few minutes later empty handed. 

“I can't find it,” he announced. “Ross, do you know where it is?”

Ross shook his head. “Maybe Ridge had the same idea we did. He probably took it and destroyed it.”

Smiffy nodded lethargically. Whatever medicine was being pumped into his blood was making him feel sleepy, and he was starting to struggle to keep his eyes open. 

“We'll just ask him next time he comes by,” he said with a yawn. “I guess as long as nobody uses it, Void can't get out...”

He heard one of them answer, but he was already drifting off. A minute later, he fell asleep.

And when he woke up again a few hours later, it was dark, all the lights were out, and his friends were curled up next to him, Ross on his left and Trott on his right.

He smiled and went back to sleep, afraid to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you guys enjoyed this story! It was my favorite one to write, and I hope you guys liked it as much as I did! See ya next story! 
> 
> Also... has anybody figured out who Void used to be? If so, let me know!


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